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LINKS TO THE PODCAST VERSION:

(Note: AEWCH is and will continue to be free as a podcast going forward, but AEWCH 50 is the LAST episode available publicly on YouTube. If you want YouTube versions of the show, go to patreon.com/connerhabib and sign up at any level; you’ll get instant access!)

Friends,

On my favorite episode of AEWCH so far, I speak with feminist author and radical, Mona Eltahawy. Mona is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why The Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution, a book which has shaken the Arab world, feminist discourse, and also, on a personal note, has changed my inner life. Mona articulates what patriarchy is — and why it is our urgent task to resist it — better than anyone I’ve ever read or spoken to. Even if you have some resistance to the term (*ahem* hello, bros), Mona will help you see why this framing is so important. .

Mona and I talk about:

our sexual assaults and how we recovered and transmuted them into action

what patriarchy is, exactly, and how it enables and protects power

why enthusiastic consent is a problem (and how our consent is violated every day)

the urgent and political task of pleasure

why masculinity is a desire and the Brett Kavanaugh meltdown, where white male rage comes from

the way white people (particularly white women) pathologize Muslims (particularly Muslim women) without confronting their own issues

what we can learn about consent from porn performers

why sex isn’t and is special and why a sexual revolution is so important

This is one of my very favorite conversations – I can’t believe I had the opportunity to speak with MacArthur fellow Kelly Link and brilliant new novelist Jordy Rosenberg! We had the conversation just a few days before Link’s MacArthur Award was announced, and just a few days after Jordy’s book was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award!

How fantastic elements in fiction can fall into reinforcing political power; how capitalism works like magic; how we turn social forces into entities; when characters becomes concepts and vice versa; autotheory; scent, senses, and pleasure in fiction; Mandy and zombies; murder; disassociation as a strategy; the evolution of consciousness through novels; and a whooooole lot of literature.

In this episode, we talk about psychology and phenomenology of time, how love has become more authentic and changed the experience of time, the vulgarity and beauty of Joyce and Ulysses, what Christianity has made available and closed off when it comes to intimacy, the struggles of the Victorian era, just how real the concepts of “modernist” and “romantic” and “Victorian” periods are, how pain and time are interconnected, why a reevaluation of time and space needs to be part of labor activism, and more!

I was alarmed to find that there weren’t many podcasts or interviews with Stephen available online (although he is known and respected in literary and historian and other academic communities) so I was determined to bring his work to a broader audience.

For show notes (this time there are LOTS of links to books!), click here.

Friends, I’m on Chapo Trap House (the biggest socialist media outlet in the US), talking about sex workers’ rights and why the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), also known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), have been disastrous for sex worker safety and livelihood.

And I’m also getting political with The Young Turks – By having their handsomest superstar, Hasan Pike on Against Everyone with Conner Habib!

Me + Hasan Piker from the Young Turks, connect our political and emotional development. Hasan is smart, hedonistic, and compassionate.

We talk about bullying, the hyper-regulation of culture, enthusiastic consent, why the context of someone’s entire body of work and life matters, Roseanne, Jon Ronson, the nightmare of straight men/straight women relational dynamics, and what we can do to improve the world.

In this episode, I talk about how desire and sex challenge materialistic narratives. And to get to the bottom of it, I take apart scientific studies of sex, investigate sexual assault, discuss the mysticism of having a wank, and explore boobs and feet.

This is a huge moment for dear Habib: I got to do an episode of Against Everyone with Conner Habib with someone who changed my life: Scott Thompson! Scott, in the event that somehow you don’t know this, is a member of the iconic comedy group Kids in the Hall, author, actor (from Hannibal),stand-up comedian, and creator of the lispy sexual rebel Buddy Cole.

Seeing Scott as Buddy on The Kids in the Hall blew my young still-becoming-gay mind. I was a lonely small town kid with no one to talk to about sex or sexuality, and then there was this crazy dangerous lisping whore on TV making jokes about everything. I was electrified.

Scott and I had a great conversation, and I couldn’t stop laughing. We talk about our alter egos being our better selves, how internalized homophobia follows you around even when you come out, AIDS-era intensities, how representation fails us, ghosts, the elimination of spirituality from the left, portals to other dimensions, raccoon spirit guides,

(Note: There’s a little jumping around in the video editing to deal with technical stuff, but it doesn’t affect the audio or the conversation.)

My guest for AEWCH 28 is author, whore, and activist Maggie McNeill. On top of those qualifications, Maggie is an uncompromising and fierce thinker who gives me strength every day. Often, if I feel like I’m exhausted, faltering, or tired of the state sex workers’ rights, or cultural attitudes towards sex, I turn to Maggie’s twitter (which you really should follow), and am re-infused with my own sense of integrity.

We talk about how legalization vs decriminalization, sex work vs the state, the problem with enthusiastic consent, Stormy Daniels, SESTA/FOSTA, and more!